Sheldon J. Plankton
|media= *SpongeBob SquarePants *SpongeBob Comics |creator=Stephen Hillenburg |voice_actor=Doug Lawrence |full_name=Sheldon J. Plankton |nickname=Plankton |age= |sex=Male |species=planktonic copepod |occupation=Owner of Chum Bucket |alliance=Evil Neutral (sometimes) |home=Bikini Bottom, Pacific Ocean |family= |pets= * Spot * Plankton's lab |friends= |enemies= |likes= |dislikes= * Helping his enemies * Sharing * Doing good for a change * Trying to keep Bikini Bottom safe & sound * Staying focused on the task |powers= |weapons= |series=SpongeBob SquarePants }} Sheldon J. Plankton, more commonly known as Plankton, is one of the ten main characters in the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise. He is a planktonic copepod. He runs an unsuccessful restaurant called the Chum Bucket alongside , a waterproof computer who is his sidekick and wife. The Chum Bucket is highly unpopular in Bikini Bottom because it serves , a type of bait made from fish meat.Vincent Waller on Twitter Both Plankton and Karen are the two main villains of the franchise. Plankton despises his rival, Mr. Krabs, for running a successful restaurant because his own business rarely gets any customers. His main goal is to steal Krabs' secret formula for Krabby Patties. Karen gives him a variety of evil plans to steal it, but their efforts always end up failing in the process. While Plankton is usually portrayed as an evil character, he is sometimes shown as a sympathetic antihero in episodes that focus on him. He is voiced by Mr. Lawrence, one of the show's staff writers. Stephen Hillenburg originally planned for Plankton and Karen to be one-time minor characters, but Lawrence wrote them into many episodes and proved that they could work as the main villains.Meet the voice behind a 'SpongeBob' character Both Plankton and Karen first appear in the episode "Plankton!" Plankton succeeds at stealing the formula in the movie, but his goal of world domination is eventually thwarted by SpongeBob. In "Friend or Foe," it is revealed that Mr. Krabs and Plankton were best friends during their childhood, but a dispute over the Krabby Patty secret formula ended their friendship for real, meaning that Plankton had a part in the creation of the Krabby Patty. Description Plankton is, as his name suggests, a tiny dark green-colored plankton who can fit in the palm of one's hand. He has some stubby appendages and one yellow eye with a red pupil. He has two long, skinny antennae with four small green spikes sticking out along them. He also has one black thick eyebrow. He has no ears or nose. In some episodes, he is shown without his skin, like in "Plankton's Regular" and "Single Cell Anniversary." His size constantly changes: in some episodes, he's the size of a Krabby Patty, meanwhile in others, he can perfectly hide in a Krabby Patty. He also has no fingers or toes, but he has the ability to sprout four. Personality Plankton has an expansive history of deception and committing misdemeanors, all while attempting to obtain the Krabby Patty recipe and outnumber Mr. Krabs' business. He has been arrested five times: in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, "Krabby Road," "Sweet and Sour Squid," "Fiasco!," and "Call the Cops." Development When SpongeBob SquarePants premiered, Plankton was not part of the series' main cast. Plankton's voice actor, Mr. Lawrence, has stated that after producing Plankton's debut episode in the late 1990s, creator Stephen Hillenburg was unsure if he would continue to use the character. After recording it, Hillenburg was noncommittal, telling Lawrence: "We'll probably do another episode next year," Lawrence summarized Plankton's origins in 2015, saying that he "was only supposed to be in one or two episodes, but I was a writer on the show and I really liked this character". Following his first voice recording as Plankton, Lawrence drafted some of his own ideas for the character and passed them to Hillenburg. From then on, Plankton began to appear more often. Lawrence considers the third season the first in which Plankton is a main character. During production on SpongeBob s early seasons, Lawrence was the only staff member writing premises and outlines involving Plankton. At the time, he felt he "had to prove Plankton could survive as more than a one-note character". Since then, multiple writers have written for Plankton without Lawrence's involvement, including the teams of writers responsible for Plankton's starring roles in both SpongeBob films. Lawrence continues to write Plankton episodes, having said in 2015, "I'm not just his voice. I get to create how the character is written and how he evolves over time." Preliminary design sketches for Plankton depict him in a robotic suit, with Karen's system built into it; that suit does not appear in the series. The suit functioned as a way to increase Plankton's presence, as one of Hillenburg's original intentions was for the character to be too small to see without a magnifying glass. As the series progressed, the animators enlarged Plankton's size, feeling that being microscopic was "not conducive to him interacting with other characters". References External Links *Plankton on SpongeBob Wikia *Plankton on Nickipedia Category:Spongebob characters Category:Nicktoons Racing series characters Category:Nicktoons Unite! series characters